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From: mim@ihnp3.UUCP (M. K. Fenlon)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Better Baby Institute
Message-ID: <128@ihnp3.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-May-85 15:48:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihnp3.128
Posted: Mon May  6 15:48:18 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 8-May-85 01:30:51 EDT
References: <ihuxn.1026> <49983@apple.UUCP> <1135@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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> In article <49983@apple.UUCP> cutter@apple.UUCP (Mark Cutter) writes:
> >Doman is completely against pressuring kids to do anything, and so
> >am I.  In fact, he absolutely forbids testing your kids in any
> >way, shape or form, as it does not enhance the learning process
> >whatsoever, and is done solely for the parents gratification.  
> 
> I beg to differ.  We've had Matt on Doman's reading and math programs
> for about 6 months now.  I started out doing it "by the book", and
> after a couple of weeks I discovered that the real motivation behind
> "don't test your child" is "if you test your child, you'll discover
> he really isn't learning any of this."  You very quickly go through
> material that is claimed to be sinking in, but that the child really
> doesn't understand at all, then you go on to more advanced things and
> the child is completely lost.  The child thinks it's neat, but learns
> random things like "anything plus anything equals two."
> 
> We had to make a fairly drastic change to the program after discovering
> that it just won't work as written.  We now do lots of testing.  In fact,
> each lesson probably has over 50% of the time doing testing.  The key
> here is that things are still very positive.  Whenever Matt gets an
> answer right (which is most of the time) he gets praised - ON EVERY
> CORRECT ANSWER.  Even the most mundane things that he's done many times
> before with ease get a "good!" and most answers get "very good!" or better.
> My tone of voice is quite excited when it's something that isn't routine,
> and if it's something new it's practically a celebration.
> 
> I don't think Matt feels pressured to do anything.  We don't show him off
> (in fact, if he does his lesson with others watching, he gets distracted
> and doesn't do so well.)  He seems to really enjoy the lessons, and he
> often asks "wanna do reading" or "wanna do dots."  He seems to me to be
> an especially happy, well adjusted 2 year old.  (However, he's always been
> like this.  I don't know what we did to deserve such an ideal child, but
> I hope we did it again in time for the second one.)
> 
> I can make some comments about Doman's math program.  What Doman claims
> and what actually happens are quite different.  Doman claims that the
> child is subconciously counting the dots, so that when he sees 37 sheep
> or 37 cars or 37 pennies he'll instantly know there are 37 there; he
> claims that the child is looking at the number, not the pattern.  At
> least in the case of Matt, he is clearly looking at the pattern.  I could
> put out 9 pennies in a random arrangement and he would not recognize them;
> moving them into the same shape as on the 9 card, he instantly knew it
> was 9.  Now that we've gotten into the bigger numbers (we're up to 36),
> he can recognize them pretty reliably, but if I hold the card upside
> down or sideways, he is lost.  He also sometimes gets two similar
> numbers confused if they have similar patterns (e.g. 17 and 19 happened
> to have similar shapes.)  I am very skeptical of the claim that "he already
> knows what addition is, you are just showing him the notation".  We are
> just now getting into addition on the second pass (see above for the
> results of the first one 12 months ago) and the jury is still out.  So
> far my impression has been that the child has no concept of addition,
> although he certainly knows the sequence of numbers.
> 
> Doman's reading program has an undocumented weakness, too.  While the
> child learns to recognize words by their overall pattern, this pattern
> is recognized (and stored away) as a picture, not as a sequence of letters.
> This may be good for the program, but you quickly discover that the
> child is only able to read the word "mommy" if it is a particular size,
> color, font, and capitalization.  If you change from the Helvetica font
> to the Times Roman typical of children's books, he can't read it.  We
> used hand drawn words, done exactly according to the directions, and
> then ordered the kit through the mail.  When the kit arrived, we lost
> about 3 days while we changed from the hand drawn font to Helvetica.
> Right now, we're reading sentences, and he has trouble with the first
> word in a sentence because of the initial capital letter.  He seems to
> be getting more comfortable with different point sizes as he sees more
> examples, but at some point he's going to have to insert a layer of
> letter recognition underneath what he's learning now or he'll never be
> able to read the wide variety of fonts that are out there.
> 
> 	Mark

Are you sure this activity is leading to reading and math learning?
There are so many readiness activities to learning that I feel are
missed by this over zealous push to get kids to learn by our mind
set and not by the mind set of the child's age. If the kid does
not recognize the word with the change of font than the child is
not ready for the activity. A 5 or 6 year old with no word attack
skills would not have problems recognizing a word even with a 
change of font. READ TO YOUR KID!  Most kids have few problems
learning the recognition and word attack skills for reading. The
children who fall behind do so because of comprehension problems
that would happen even in situations where the material is read
to the child.

The things to work on both prior to and during the first few years
of reading instruction are:
	comprehension(listening as well as reading)
		-what happened
		-why
		-how
	reading between the lines
	infer what is not stated
	
Montessori, one of the leaders in preschool education, felt that
children have "periods of sensitivity" for learning certain things.
Let the child direct the education during these early years, by
his or her own interests and abilities. You might learn something
from your kid too if you let nature be a little freer.

					Mary